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why buy gluten?

why buy gluten?

I was at this mill last week (didn't even know it existed, until I took a walk after a business meeting). They sold a seperate box with 'gluten' but they could not tell me why I would want to buy that (the miller was out). Can TFL tell this amateur?

I'm just beginning with this hobby, but from what I've read, it's also helpful if you're using a lot of bran, cracked grains and so on in a multi-grain bread, as these will cut through the gluten strands as you knead. Last weekend I tried adding some to a variation of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Tyrolean Ten-Grain Torpedo, The Bread Bible p. 394, (she lists 12 g or 4 tsp of vital wheat gluten as an optional addition) and also changed the flour to a 13.8% protein flour, because I upped the grains and was afraid of doing damage to the gluten. I also just wanted to see what would happen if I went with exremely high gluten levels.

Although the gluten was extremely high, the result was still good. It was a very very firm dough, which held its shape extremely well, not spreading out at all during the final rise. I got a nice crust, and a delicious, chewy, slightly dense crumb. Now that I've probably pushed the upper gluten limits I'll reduce the gluten and go slacker for the next version and try for a lighter crumb with larger, more irregular holes to see what happens. Like I said, I'm just beginning with this, so I want to play with the variables, preferably one at a time.

I don't know if my husband's ready to be quite that adventurous, but hey - a girl's gotta eat lunch when the other half isn't home ;)

BTW, I can't remember what the ratio of VWG to bread flour is in order to "convert" it (for lack of a better term) to "High Gluten Flour." Is it 1T per *cough* "cup" of flour? I don't have high gluten flour, but I do have 10 pounds of bread flour and a partial bag of white whole wheat. I'm thinking of putting a bit of whole wheat flour into my bagels for the fiber. I figure I'll put the white whole wheat in the soaker portion of the dough in order to help it develop a bit.

I pulled my package of Bob's Red Mill VWG from the freezer and checked the directions: one tablespoon per cup of flour.

On the other hand, Bob's website says:

Gluten, Vital Wheat is the natural protein found in wheat. It contains 75% protein. A small amount added to yeast bread recipes improves the texture and elasticity of the dough. This is often used by commercial bakeries to produce light textured breads, and can easily put the home bread baker on a par with the professionals. Vital Wheat Gluten can also be used to make a meat substitute known as seitan.

You might want to check what the gluten percentage is in your flour first since it varies so much by brand, but generally when I want to beef my bread flour up to "high gluten", I'll add about 1tsp per cup. I do this pretty often for bagels and they've turned out really well. On the rare occasion when I'll actually run out of bread flour (good grief it unfortunately happens!) and only have APF in the house, I'll do the same thing - 1tsp of gluten per cup of apf and that also seems to work pretty well. I've always thought that a whole TB might be a bit much, but to be honest I haven't tried it. 1tsp seems to work pretty well for what I've been doing :)

Well, I'll be starting off with a mix of KA Bread Flour and KA White Wheat.

Maybe I'll do 1T for each cup of WW I use and 1t for each cup of Bread Flour and split the difference. The bagels don't call for WW, but I do so love having the extra fiber in there and trying to pass things off as healthy for me, since they're whole grain ;)

I plan on putting the WW in the sponge so it'll have those 2 hours to soak and autolyse. Then I'll add the bread flour and VWG.

I'm still hand-wringing about my kitchen aid. I was going to start my bagels tonight, but we got back from the store far too late. If I KNEW, 100% for sure that the KA would handle it, I'd have done it, but the prospect of hand-kneading stiff bread dough when I'm already tired just tossed that out the window.

I also need to start my pizza dough tomorrow. I'm trying Reinhart's Roman crust and hoping I can get a more cracker-like crust. Open the windows and warn the vampires, too. I bought the garlic to make caramelized garlic. Mmmm.

I was given "The Bread Bible" by Ingram and Shapter. A recipe I want to try calls for "Granary" or malthouse flour. What is the US equivalent? (This recipe is for an English bread.) Or what is the best substitute?

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